Teen Travel Blog

Sarah Dutton was one of our entries for our Summer of a Lifetime essay contest and we thought her essay was definitely worth a read!  Sarah was an alumni of our 31-day blue water adventure to Tahiti, Fiji and New Zealand last summer – she actually wrote this essay for her college applications.  Good luck to you, Sarah!  We think any college would be lucky to have you!  Read on and see why we thought this essay was noteworthy…

Sarah Dutton
Common Application Essay

I was in the ocean halfway around the world with fifteen people I had known for only nine days trying to breathe underwater. What the heck was I thinking?! I had a history of panic attacks and hyperventilation problems. I had just spent three long days in a hot classroom watching cheesy videos about scuba diving. I had seen children, teenagers, and adults frolicking underwater and diving like life was one, big, happy underwater picnic. But when placed into the situation myself, infamous butterflies fluttered into my stomach.

We drove to the dive site, and before I knew it almost everyone was ready to go. I rushed to get my equipment together as the nerves built up in my stomach. One of our instructors came over to help me get ready faster. He motioned for me to sit on the side of the boat and flip over backward to enter the water. I gave him my best “you have got to be kidding me” look. He ignored the look completely and flipped me over the side of the boat. I rushed up for air like a child learning how to swim. I’ll never forget the first time I breathed underwater. Breathing was so much harder than I thought it was going to be! Breathing in takes more effort than one would think, and breathing out is simply blowing bubbles, which threw me off completely because it was so different. And of course, the whole time I kept thinking to myself, “Don’t panic! You’ll hyperventilate and die!” which was the basic message I had gotten from the videos. As everybody rushed to go down, I reluctantly stayed on the surface and came up with reasons to get back on the boat.

As always when faced with extreme challenges, I began having an internal conversation with myself– the angel and devil on your shoulder kind of thing. I started comforting myself, telling myself that feeling uncomfortable wasn’t my fault; scuba diving was a strange, new, and potentially dangerous activity that I wasn’t familiar with. I didn’t have to scuba dive; in fact, there are tons of people in the world who choose not to! But the other part of me began yelling at that part, saying I was making excuses for myself and telling me to get over it.

Well, this battle lasted all day and actually went into the night when I recorded the day’s activities in my journal. “It’s just stressful being underwater because I love air so much. I just want to be able to do it. I have to. I HAVE to! Blah. It’s just so hard to breathe that it’s not fun, you know? I’m going to try harder tomorrow. I’m going to try harder and succeed tomorrow. I can do it.” ……Jeez woman, make up your mind!

Well, I had never conquered a challenge like this before. Prior to diving, I knew there was a pretty promising possibility of not earning my scuba certification, and I was okay with that. I thought to myself, “As long as I try, that’s all that matters.” I would have been okay with not scuba diving. But I realized that I didn’t want to be just “okay” with a decision. I didn’t want to try one day, have breathing be hard, and give up. Not earning my certification could have been enough, and usually it would have been enough, but this time I decided I was not going to let it be enough.

Day 11, July 8, 2009: The group dive. Today was the last day of our Fijian scuba-diving experiences. We sailed out to the middle of the ocean with nothing but a fantastic blue all around us. People began getting their gear on and flipping backward into the water. I flipped into the water and started tensing up. I could feel my breath shortening. The fear swarmed back into my body; I didn’t think I could do it. Again the internal conflict began: “I tried, I really did, but I just can’t do this. Some people can’t scuba dive, and it’s okay that I’m one of those people.” But that other part of me fought back with all its might. “No! Not this time! I need to scuba dive! I need to prove to myself that I can do this! I need to take this challenge and I need to conquer this fear. Never in my life have I done something like this before, and who knows when I will get the opportunity again. I need to do this to prove to myself that even when I’m sure I can’t, I can.”

And so guess what? I did. I descended down that rope and I went nineteen meters underwater.  I did it. I have never felt prouder than I did during those forty-five minutes. Scuba diving that day was a great accomplishment, and I hope it is the first of many. Now I know that when all hope is lost, when fear has overwhelmed my body, and when I’m sure that I can’t, I can. Thank goodness I tried again.

Tags: adventure, Essay contest, fiji, new zealand, summer of a lifetime, tahiti

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